Monica

Wednesday night I taught a last-minute class on liturgy at my synagogue. (A different person had been scheduled to teach a different topic but got sick; in exchange for pulling a class out of nowhere in one evening I got to pick the topic. :-) ) I've been thinking of trying to arrange something like this in the spring, perhaps one evening per major chunk of the service (amidah, kriat sh'ma, etc). The way I envision the class, we'd do some text study with lots of commentaries rather than this being a lecture. In the I-don't-have-time-to-prepare-materials version, this was a short lecture on the structure of the overall service followed by a somewhat-rambling discussion.

After my opening comments I had proposed breaking up into a few smaller groups so people could focus on the parts they were most interested in; most people didn't have specific interests so we stayed together. (There were ten of us, so that's feasible in a way that wouldn't have been had the class been well-advertised and popular.) One attendee wanted to discuss the r'tzei (one prayer in the amidah), so we started there. I asked someone to read it, asked the group to name themes in just that one paragraph (there are several), and then we talked about each of those in turn, going down a few side paths along the way. Then I suggested that -- since ours is a congregation where weekday prayer is largely unfamiliar -- we step through the weekday intermediate blessings, where we ask for things like wisdom, foregiveness, rain for our crops, and so on. I think this opened some eyes; these are broad communal petitions, not individual ones. One student requested a follow-on class on the Sh'ma and its blessings and some others suggested that they would be interested in that too.

I thought the class went ok; I am not a particularly proficient teacher and I think that showed, but the students also knew that this was a last-minute offering and were being forgiving. Three people told me later that they had really enjoyed it, which I hadn't been able to read in all of their faces during the class, so I guess that's a good sign. One of the three, who is an experienced teacher and the person who requested the session on the Sh'ma, asked about working together on it, which I will certainly take her up on.

I had brought, but did not use in class, the few volumes I own of My People's Prayer Book by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman. These are excellent; they go through the liturgy in detail, with a range of commentaries, presented well. I plan to use these in future classes on this topic. (I also plan, someday, to buy the volumes I don't yet have.)

Today in our talmud study my rabbi and I reached the passage in B'rachot (16b) that records the concluding prayers of several sages. The t'filah, the central prayer, has a fixed text, but there is a place to insert personal words at the end. (Over time, some of these have in turn become fixed.) On this day before Yom Kippur, let me share some of these prayers that struck me most strongly.

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Thank you to everyone who responded to my laptop-versus-PDA query.

Thursday was our annual company retreat, held way the heck too far out of town. It's a nice site, but it's 40 miles from the office, and they schedule it so you're in rush-hour traffic both ways. Oh well. (Note to self: if we use this site again, bring own caffeine supply for the morning. They didn't put out pop until after lunch.)

I went late, after morning services, hitching a ride with someone else with a constraint (dropping kids off at school). I had an interesting (brief) conversation with that congregation's new rabbi after services. ( geeking )

Their new rabbi is on the bimah during morning services, but he doesn't lead. After the first time I asked him if I was encroaching (maybe he wanted to lead) and he said no, go ahead. Every week he has complimented me on something, so I'll take this as ongoing consent. (You don't need a rabbi to lead, of course, and it's not automatic that a rabbi would trump a layperson, but I figure it's polite to defer if that seems to be called for.)

The rabbi has an Ashkenazi pronunciation (and accent). Most of the congregation sits in the back third of the pews, so I'm not used to having a different-to-me pronunciation so close. It's improving my concentration skills. :-)

During Pesach I've finally noticed two things I'm a little curious about.( kinda-geeky Hebrew stuff )

There's a point in the morning service where we study a little bit of torah. For reasons unknown to me, the weekday morning minyan almost always reads something from Pirke Avot in that slot, rather than the usual text called for in the siddur. So I've been doing that since starting to lead that service because, well, that's what they do. But I've sometimes seen variation from this norm, and these readings didn't really seem to be doing their job, so I decided to try something new -- short bits about the weekly parsha. (Yeah, I should have started last week. Didn't think of it then.) This is supposed to be study, not a d'var torah, so my plan is to repeat something from a source, not add my own layer of interpretation. We'll see how this goes over (no noticable reactions today).

Today's bit:

We might ask: why was it necessary for God to destroy the whole world with the flood? Was there no possibility of redemption? We learn in Midrash Tanchuma that when Noach was commanded to build the ark, he began by planting cedar trees. The people asked him what he was doing and he told them about the coming flood, but they ridiculed him. Later, he cut down the grown trees to make planks, and again the people asked him and ridiculed him when they heard his answer. Noach then built the ark, and only after all of that did God send the flood.

Meta: When we were doing Pirke Avot I just read out of a siddur; with this my choices were to carry a book in with me (the one where I found the passage), make a copy, or do it from memory. I opted for the last. I was a little nervous, but I think it'll be fine next time.

( Why do this? )

Friday night I learned that there was a bar mitzvah scheduled for this morning. Our rabbi was scheduled to read torah in the informal minyan, which he couldn't do if he was conducting a bar mitzvah. (The associate rabbi is away.) Oops. Where'd that come from?

The new worship chair asked me how I'd dealt with this problem in the past, but it's a new problem. No one in our group who would answer a phone on Shabbat is up for preparing a reading with that little notice, but the new chair had a good idea that would allow us to not just skip that part of the service entirely. He asked one of the Hebrew-fluent regulars (who was there Friday night) to read out of a chumash; concurrently, he said he would, as an educational effort, follow the reading in the scroll with everyone gathered around so they could see. He asked me if that would be ok and I said "no blessings and it's just study, not a torah service, right? If so, fine by me". So we did that and it worked well.

(For those interested in minutiae: I led the group in singing Al Sh'losha D'varim as we took the scroll out and Eitz Chayim as we put it away, but no hakafah, no hagbahah/g'lilah, and no other bits of the torah service except the general misheberach of healing and the rosh chodesh insertion. Wasn't sure if I should do the latter; decided on the fly.)

Two thoughts occurred to me too late to do anything about them. First, during Roman rule public torah readings were outlawed and that's when the custom of haftarah readings arose; we could conceivably have read haftarah and not torah, hearkening back to that. If I'd thought of it Friday night we could have asked the rabbi, but I wasn't going to try to make that call this morning.

The other thought came when I realized that we had a larger-than-usual crowd this morning and there'd be no way everyone would be able to see while crowded around the table. A couple weeks ago at HUC I saw a videotape showing some unusual worship ideas; in one segment two people held a torah scroll vertically for the reader, with the text facing the congregation, so people could see from their seats. Neat idea, and if I'd thought of it earlier I would have suggested it as a solution.

Request to brain trust:

I'm looking for information on the "eitz chayim" passage in the torah-reading liturgy, starting with its textual source (dang, didn't bring a concordance). I'm interested in its liturgical history. Was it an earlier or later addition? It's universal in Ashkenazi nusach; what about others? Any other interesting tidbits?

Yes, I hope to get to the campus library tomorrow, but who am I to turn down any parallel processing that might be forthcoming?

Thanks.

During the torah service it's traditional to say a prayer for healing for specific, named individuals. (The congregation keeps a list or allows people to speak up.) This morning someone spoke up and said "can we say something for the bombing victims?" and David, who leads the torah service, said "we'll do that later". I immediately wondered two things: (1) what bombing? and (2) what does he have in mind?

(I know about the bombing now, but I don't routinely look at news before leaving the house. And it was probably too late for this morning's paper anyway, and I certainly didn't have time to check the web.)

While other people were preparing the torah scroll to be put away David took my siddur, hastily flipped through it, and pointed to a page of supplementary prayers for healing. It was just a psalm (I think -- I didn't see a label, though I noted a page number to check later), which we read in English. I asked him when to do this, and he said between the end of the torah service and Aleinu. So I did.

My instincts didn't go in that direction at all. I would have been looking for another misheberach to insert into the torah service, right after the one for individuals. I never would have thought to look where he did in the siddur. Actually, at my own congregation we would have just added the unnamed bombing victims onto the other prayer, on the theory that even if we don't know their names God does. (I believe the misheberach is also intended specifically for Jews, while this other reading was probably more general, but in our congregation we don't strictly enforce that either. We've certainly added known non-Jews to our list, like the head of the local Islamic center when he was ill. He's a friend of our communtiy.)

This is not the sort of thing that comes up often, so I was impressed by David's agility in immediately coming up with an answer. I wonder how much was knowledge and how much improvisation. I hope this is something I get better at in time.

I also hope I get better at faking that knowing look when I really have no idea what people are talking about. :-)

This weekend was my congregation's annual Shabbat retreat. I had a really good time, and I found myself focusing inward more than I have in the past. Neither of the unpleasant people who sometimes come came, which probably helped. Unfortunately, a couple of our regulars couldn't make it at the last minute due to illnesses. We had 24 people in the end, which is a good size for discussions.

I'm not going to do a detailed chronicle here, but I'll mention a few things that particularly struck me.

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I have heard the following story before, and my rabbi told it again at the shabbaton:

A poor man in the shtetl has a dream one night that he should go to a certain bridge in Prague and dig under it to find a treaure. The man shrugs it off. The next night he has the same dream, but it feels more urgent. He'd love to have enough money to feed his family, he thinks, and mentions the dream to his wife, but following a dream is silly so he shrugs it off again. The next night the dream is even more intense, metaphorically picking him up by his shirt, shaking him, and telling him to go to Prague and dig under the bridge. The next morning, over objections from his family, he says he's going to do this and sets out.

After several days he arrives in Prague and finds the bridge from his dreams. He feels embarrassed, and there's a watchman there, so he just stands around for a while. Eventually, overcoming the awkward feeling, he begins to dig in the dirt with his hands, at which point the watchman asks what he's doing. He answers evasively and the watchman summons the police, who escort the man to jail for loitering.

The police ask him why he was digging and eventually he says "this is really silly, but I had this dream that if I came to this bridge and dug, I would find enough money to feed my family". The guard laughs at him, saying: "Ha! Just last night I had a dream that if I went to the home of some stupid Jew 50 miles west of here and dug under his stove, I'd find a treasure! You don't see me doing that, do you? Dreams are just dreams. Go on, get out of here." And he sends the man on his way. The man, of course, goes back home, digs under his stove, and finds a treasure.

Sometimes you have to travel away from your home to find something that was there all along. This Shabbat was kind of like that for me.

For a while I've been compiling a mental list (which I should turn into a written list before it rots) of tips and tricks for leading services. I mean to someday share this list with my congregation's other lay leaders (after running it all by my rabbi). These tips come from learning on the job (a lot), observing my rabbi (a lot), formal education (a little), and watching other lay leaders (a fair bit). This weekend I observed something kind of related that I don't want to lose track of.

What I noticed was that the rabbi sprinkled his talk liberally with Hebrew words, some well-known and others that could be understood from context even if you didn't previously know the words. He never used the language in a way that would leave an uneducated listener completely in the dark, but he also did not shy away from using Hebrew. I like this, a lot, and in my experience the Orthodox do this a fair bit in general. It's something that Reform Jews could learn from.

I speculate that Reform leaders, wanting to be as open and accessible as possible, shy away from this for fear of losing people. And there may be some merit in that fear, as members of Reform congregations are less likely to have gone to a full-time Hebrew school and thus been able to absorb more of the references. On the other hand, it's not as if I had that experience or have become fluent, and I can generally follow these conversations. Given a statement like "when Moshe brought the luchot down from Mount Sinai and saw the people worshipping the golden calf...", don't most people understand that "luchot" is "tablets"? That's the sort of context I'm talking about. That, and sometimes people use a term and immediately translate -- "Nadav and Avihu made an aish zarah, an alien fire, on the altar...". This just makes the educational aspect a little more explicit.

As with everything, context and audience matter. When my rabbi and I talk he uses a lot more Hebrew than he does when giving a sermon, for instance. When friends and I are discussing some bit of torah or halacha the Hebrew terms fly, though I wouldn't do that when talking with random members of my congregation. But I wonder if we don't shy away from Hebrew a little too much. It's happened in the liturgy already (and Hebrew is now coming back into favor in the last couple decades), and that avoidance helped to move Hebrew from "normal" to "strange and foreign". But maybe we should be pulling small bits of the language back into the normal lexicon of synagogue discourse, not just in worship but in conversation, as a way of making Hebrew seem less foreign and scary to folks.

D&D Thursday night was exciting. We are in the middle of a fight with our arch-rivals, a pair of high-level vampires. We ran out of time before we ran out of vampires, so we had to freeze the combat until next time.

Shabbat services were good. My rabbi seems to be mostly recovered from his surgery, so things are back to normal. He's moving around more easily and has more of his energy back. Friday night he gave an excellent sermon (that doesn't summarize well).

Saturday morning we had an interesting discussion at torah study that started off with the observation that we all reflect on the people as a whole. This somehow morphed into the question of how a congregation handles notorious members (or attendees). If a Jew who's accused -- but not yet convicted -- of heinous crimes shows up at services and asks for an aliya (saying the torah blessings -- an honor), do you give it to him? ( Read more... )

I'll be chanting torah in a few weeks, so I spent some of Saturday afternoon working on the portion. Let me just say that the third aliya of Sh'mini looks like it could be the poster child for weird trope combinations. I had to consult Trope Trainer for some of them; the book and class weren't enough. I'm just sayin'.

Saturday night was Ralph and Lori's annual St. Patrick's Day party. This was fun, and it looks like the hosts got to spend more time enjoying the party this time. (I believe they expressed a desire to have "only" too much food, as opposed to the vast quantities of food they've had in the past. This worked.) Several of the Claritech gang were there, though some past regulars were missing. We met some of Ralph's coworkers and didn't scare them away. There were people playing music, but not much gaming this time. (Well, we left around midnight and I think some gaming started later.)

We hosted Sunday dinner to allow Ralph and Lori to recover. As sometimes happens, I had a dessert I wanted to make and worked backwards from that. The dairy dessert dictated a non-meat meal, so I opted for spinach lasagna to prove I can make things other than fish. :-) (Note to future self: the recipe in Easy Kosher Cooking works well, and much much better than the one on the side of the noodle box.) As long as you're making lasagna anyway you may as well make extra, so I now have a pan in the freezer to donate to the synagogue food stash. Dessert was a gingerbread pineapple-upside-down cake, so I made a tossed salad with fruit (including pineapple) for foreshadowing. Ok, ok -- I had leftover pineapple. I wasn't sure how much garlic bread to make, but seem to have made exactly enough. It was a nice relaxing evening of pleasant conversation, and a good wind-down from the weekend.

This week is the final session of the trope class. Our numbers have dwindled and I don't know what's going on there. David (the teacher) told me to bring the torah portion I'm working on and we'll go over it. Sounds good to me.

Purim is in a bit under two weeks. estherchaya and sethcohen and beckyfeld and Harold invited Dani and me down for Purim and Shabbat, and I'm glad that Dani decided to go with me. It's been a while since I've seen most of these folks; it'll be nice to spend a weekend visiting. And, well, eating and drinking, 'cause you have to on Purim. :-)

This morning I participated in the annual Shabbat service held by the (Pittsburgh) Jewish Women's Center. I'm not really a member of the group (been to a couple functions, on the mailing list, don't pay dues), but several women in my congregation are and they recruited some of the rest of us.

I chanted torah, and it was the longest portion I've done to date (about three-quarters of a column in the scroll). I was a little worried about that, but apparently I wasn't the only one so they told us "do as much as you can and we'll fill in from a chumash as necessary". However, I really wanted to meet this challenge.

( torah-reading stuff )

The service overall went pretty well. There was a lot of singing, and I knew about two-thirds of the melodies (but picked up most of the others trivially). They handed out percussion instruments; next time I will do predatory choosing and take the large loud tambourine to keep it out of the hands of someone sitting next to me. :-) The song leader was very good (she's a pro) and the service leaders in general were good.

We used what I gather is the latest draft of Mishkan T'filah, the forthcoming Reform siddur. (Y'know, the economics of publishing have really changed. They've published a bunch of draft editions; I don't think that would have been feasible a generation ago.) They were on loan from URJ so I couldn't borrow one for a few days to look it over more closely; oh well. They've fixed some of the things I considered to be bugs in earlier drafts, but they've introduced some things that really annoy me. Oh well; I guess that's an inevitable consequence of committee-produced products.

The service was long (almost three hours, without musaf), and also started late. It was funny -- at 9:30 (the scheduled start time) the organizers were huddling in the front of the room, and all of the people from my congregation were exchanging glances. We start on time, always (barring something really unusual). Others present made comments about "Jewish standard time" and thought nothing of starting (ultimately) 15-20 minutes late.

( liturgical minutiae )

All in all, it was a pretty good service, with some things I liked and some I didn't care for. People were very friendly and everyone was working together, which made a big difference.

If they ask me to participate in a future service I'm not sure what I'll say. On the one hand it was fun, but on the other, it was a lot of work to learn the portion and I didn't get to put that work to use for the benefit of my own congregation. Maybe that means I should focus on chanting torah in my own congregation and ask to lead a part of the service if JWC invites me again. Leading doesn't require nearly the preparation that chanting torah does.

After I got home Dani and I headed out to an SCA event. More about that later, but I will mention the Jewish tie-in here. Halacha holds that if a negative consequence of keeping Shabbat is merely financial (and not of the will-be-out-on-the-street-if-this-goes-wrong variety), you keep Shabbat. This is one of the reasons that we don't conduct business on Shabbat even though you could make more money by keeping your store open on Saturday. More personally, it was the basis for my agreeing to let Dani drive my car -- with its previously-pristine clutch -- to the event, though Dani normally drives an automatic. Ouchy ouchy ouchy. :-)